Right Wing Nut House

The 2 hour conclusion to the National Geographic Channel’s gripping documentary “Inside 9/11 will be shown tonight at 8:00 PM central time. If you missed the first 2 hour installment, you can see it starting at 6:00 PM central.

The first part of this extraordinary documentary left me saddened beyond words. The show makes absolutely clear that culpability for 9/11 lies with both Democrats and Republicans. And trying to parse which party is more to blame is an exercise in sophistry. You are beyond redemption if you watch this program and come to any other conclusion except that our policy makers for the last 15 years were all smug, arrogant, self-deluding fools. For a variety of reasons - political correctness and overconfidence stand out - everyone missed clear and unmistakable signs of the attack.

I found it interesting that the documentary included a brief 30 second snippet on Able Danger, alluding to the operation being run at Special Forces Command in Tampa as having a chart that unearthed 2 of the hijackers names and correctly tying them to al Qaeda in July of 2000. One wonders if this information was a late edition to the program or whether they had independent verification of Able Danger months ago.

This really is a don’t miss moment in television history. The program is eminently watchable with unbelievable graphics, photos, and footage with a storytelling style that emphasizes repeating the relationships between the hijackers, the radical mosques that they were recruited at, the major al Qaeda players, and other aspects of the attacks several times so that the viewer can easily follow the convoluted and confusing movements of the principals.

Commentary from experts is also fascinating although the reporter for al Jazeera is way too smug. At one point he asks “How do you impress a German? By being perfect,” in talking about Mohamed Atta’s student career in Germany.

I daresay the reporter didn’t impress too many Germans with that remark.

Don’t miss this show. And as soon as it’s available on DVD, I’m buying it.

UPDATE

I’m not the only one who noticed the reference to what could have been Able Danger in last night’s show. Rich Lowrey received this email at the Corner:

The National Geographic channel is running a two part miniseries on events leading up to and including 9/11. The first part was on this evening and did a wonderful job of tracing the rise of OBL and what is know about those involved in 9/11. It was a truly fascinating 2 hour show and was very informative.

You may want to contact the producers of the show and ask what info they have on this chart. They must have something because they included it in the program. Having followed the Able Danger story over the past few weeks I was taken aback by the casual and brief mention of the “chart” given to the special ops group.

Mr. Lowrey is looking for anyone else who might have noticed that bit or who might have additional information that would shed some light on this.

I think there’s a pretty good chance that they added the info in the last week or so once Able Danger came to light. However, there’s a chance that one of the commentators - several of which have written books about the intel leading up to 9/11 - may have gotten wind of the operation and put the information in their book, not knowing it was Able Danger.

The Able Danger story just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser…

Due to my hosting this week’s Bonfire of the Vanities, the deadline for entering this week’s Carnival of the Clueless has been extended to Tuesday evening 10:00 PM eastern.

Last week was the best yet with 36 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

The results for this week’s Watcher’s vote are in and the winner is Dr. Sanity for her Able Danger post “A Motive for Berger’s Bizzare Behavior?” Finishing in a tie for second was AJ from the Strata-Sphere’s Able Danger article “Able Danger Busting Loose” and The Glittering Eye for “Has Television Changed Everything?”

In the non-Council category, there was no contest. Mohammed from Iraq the Model won with “A Message to Cindy Sheehan.”

If you’d like to participate in this week’s Watcher’s vote, go here and follow instructions.

Go. Read. Weep.

Blog bud Jay at Stop the ACLU is in great need of donations so that they can run a full page ad in the Washington Times.

We need volunteers and eventually paid clerks to help kick the Stop the ACLU Coalition in high gear. We have no choice now. We must fully fund this operation if we are to have success in thwarting the ACLU. If you can help in any way or know someone who will, please let me know today. Thank you and God Bless America!

Why not go over there now and give Jay a hand.

The summer seems to have turned into a season of discontent for conservatives. As the President’s popularity plummets and support for the War in Iraq wavers, Administration policies that perhaps should have been questioned long ago but for the intervention of politics and the November election have come under attack. It’s hard to recall at this point the absolute necessity in supporting the President when the choice was between Bush and the conspiracists, fantasist’s, and simpering internationalists who wished to subsume American interests to the execrable anti-Americans at the United Nations

Far from being the monolithic entity we are accused of by our critics on the left, the center-right Shadow Media has been roiled in recent months by several high energy, high profile issues, revealing cracks and splits between religious conservatives, secular conservatives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians. The Terri Schiavo imbroglio was instructive in this regard in that it exacerbated tensions that already existed between the religious conservatives and libertarians while revealing the true fault lines in the conservative movement that exist between rationalists and theists.

But where these fault lines seemed to knit together and ultimately unite conservatives was at the water’s edge. Schiavo, intelligent design, the courts - all the issues that divided us were put aside once the debate turned to the War on Terror. The overarching need to support the President as Commander in Chief and our troops in the field against the hard left whose policy prescriptions would eventually lead, I believe, to an unthinkable terrorist attack on the homeland outweighed any quibbles we may have had with the Administration’s tactical and strategic thinking.

Sadly, this has now changed.

This was, perhaps inevitable. The rumbling on the right regarding the President’s less than conservative governance is nothing new and have recently exploded into full throated howls of protest about the President’s budgetary policies and social activism. And now, several high profile, influential conservatives have begun to desert the President on Iraq.

Greg Djerejian has recently written several scathing critiques of war policy both from a military and political standpoint. He’s called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and additional troops on the ground in Iraq in order to give the nascent Iraqi government a chance to succeed in a more secure environment.

John Cole and others (myself included) have broken with the Administration on their detention policies, believing them to be inhumane and political disastrous. And now one of the right’s more thoughtful and respected bloggers has pretty much come out and said the Iraq war is a failure and we need an exit strategy.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge doesn’t pull any punches in this critique of both the President’s policies and his leadership. The first shot across the bow is a doozy:

It’s time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Meanwhile, Bush continues to insult our intelligence…

The good professor then lists the left’s talking points on Iraq and apparently adopts them whole hog:

After all, if Iraq’s alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why aren’t we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddam’s cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why aren’t we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?

The trouble with Bush’s justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where they’ll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here, and whom we’ll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers be used as fly paper.

First, as for WMD in Iran and North Korea, the professor’s question as to why we’re not at war with them will be answered soon enough. The mad mullahs in Tehran seem hell bent for leather on enriching enough uranium to build nuclear weapons. The fact that the Iranian theocracy has based it’s entire existence on the destruction of Israel has not gone unnoticed in Tel Aviv. I daresay it will become more and more difficult to restrain the IDF the closer Iran gets to realizing its nuclear ambitions. It should go without saying that any military action taken by Israel will by necessity embroil the United States in whatever crisis ensues. I would think that we’ll have more than enough war for anyone’s taste if that occurs.

As for Kim, he has impoverished his country to build a weapon that he can’t possibly use. North Korea’s improving trade relations with China as well as their dependence on Bejing’s food shipments may give enough leverage to the six party talks to pry those weapons from his hands. It’s still possible Kim will lash out at his neighbor to the south. But that eventuality is fading as both Russia and China - Kim’s major trading partners - follow the lead of the United States as we seek to make the Korean peninsula a nuclear free zone.

As for the justifications for war, Bainbridge uses the same narrow interpretation - the WMD argument - to take the Administration to task for changing the rationale for war as the left. In fact, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 lists a hosts of justifications for the invasion. The fact that some of our erstwhile allies whose assistance would have been appreciated and was much needed at the time were apparently bought off by Saddam’s oil for food bribery is not mentioned by the professor. Nor his well documented ties to terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. Nor does the professor once mention 9/11 whose shadow will color American policy for the forseeable future.

On the subject of OBL, the professor channels John Kerry:

While we remain bogged down in Iraq, of course, Osama bin Laden remains at large somewhere. Multi-tasking is all the rage these days, but whatever happened to finishing a job you started? It strikes me that catching Osama would have done a lot more to discourage the jihadists than anything we’ve done in Iraq.

C’mon professor! We just lost 19 brave men in the mountains of Afghanistan who by most reports, were following up on a solid lead as to Bin Laden’s whereabouts. What would you want us to do? Send a couple of divisions into the mountains to tramp about aimlessly in some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet? Wherever Osama is hiding, he’s hardly inspiring anyone at this point. Consequently, his capture would not “discourage” the jihadists. And his death may in fact make him a martyr. Besides, he may very well be in an area where sending large bodies of troops would be politically impractical. General Musharaf of Pakistan has enough problems with restless provinces without allowing several thousand Americans to upset the delicate control he’s trying to maintain.

I will say that the professor’s take on the so-called “flypaper strategy” is spot on:

The second problem is that the fly paper strategy seems to be radicalizing our foes even more. For every fly that gets caught, it seems as though 10 more spring up. This should hardly come as a surprise to anybody who has watched Israel pursue military solutions to its terrorist problems, after all. Does anybody really think Israel’s military actions have left Hezbollah or Hamas with fewer foot soldiers? To the contrary, the London bombing suggests to me that it is only a matter of time before the jihadists strike in the US again, even though our troops remain hung out as fly paper in the Augean Stables of Iraq.

I agree that the fly-paper motif, while politically useful, has become a silly rationale for the reconstruction of Iraq. But this critique makes no sense:

Conversely, the latest news about that rocket attack on a US Navy ship in Jordan seems to confirm my concerns: “The Abdullah Azzam Brigades — an al-Qaida-linked group that claimed responsibility for the bombings which killed at least 64 people at Sharm el-Sheik in July and 34 people at two other Egyptian resorts last October — said in an Internet statement that its fighters had fired the Katyushas, bolstering concerns that Islamic extremists had opened a new front in the region.” Indeed, the NYT reports that: “The possible involvement of Iraqis and the military-style attack have raised fears that militants linked to Iraq’s insurgency may be operating on Jordanian soil.”

The very nature of our decision to take out Iraq presupposed an expansion of the war with jihadists. This was a given from the very start. We had a choice; we could have sat home and hoped against hope that radical Islamists would leave us alone or we could take the war to them and flush them out. Not flies to flypaper, professor but smoke to cockroaches. The expansion you speak of is the inevitable by-product of our success, however limited so far, in Iraq. Besides, the Islamist’s goal of destabilizing Arab regimes predates our involvement in Iraq. They hardly needed to be radicalized in that regard.

Finally, Bainbridge posits a bleak future for Republicans:

What really annoys me, however, are the domestic implications of all this. The conservative agenda has advanced hardly at all since the Iraq War began. Worse yet, the growing unpopularity of the war threatens to undo all the electoral gains we conservatives have achieved in this decade. Stalwarts like me are not going to vote for Birkenstock wearers no matter how bad things get in Iraq, but what about the proverbial soccer moms? Gerrymandering probably will save the House for us at least through the 2010 redistricting, but what about the Senate and the White House?

In sum, I am not a happy camper. I’m very afraid that 100 years from now historians will look back at W’s term and ask “what might have been?”

I’m happy to hear that the professor will refrain from totally abandoning the Republican party for the sandal wearers and incense burners of the left. That said, his analysis does not take into account that 2006 is still a long way off and 2008 may as well be in another quadrant of the universe. Unless something untoward happens to radicalize those soccer moms, demographics alone are trending so much the Republican’s way that it would take a seismic shift in the electorate for the kind of disaster predicted by the professor.

There is good sense to be found in the professor’s words. I’ve been writing for months that the President has taken a back seat on the war and it’s time for him to get out in front and lead again. The sporadic way in which Bush has gone about defending his policies has been his single greatest failing. And as many of us - including Professor Bainbridge - have been saying for months, it’s time to inject a dash of realism into the Administration’s war talk and start telling the American people exactly what the stakes are if we fail. The cost of defeat in Iraq is too horrible to contemplate. And while the professor’s critique does make some good points about the increasing sectarian nature of the Iraqi government, I believe we’re soon going to discover if some kind of liberal democratic system is compatible with Islamic law.

If as I suspect, it is, then the blood and treasure expended by the United States in Iraq will not be seen 100 years from now as a might have been but rather as the cheapest and most efficacious way to win the War on Terror.

Here’s a question for all my wonderful little trolls whose comments are not only getting more obscene (they know I’ll delete them if they use profanity) but also more desperate:

If Cindy Sheehan is the “Rosa Parks” of the peace movement, if she’s the second coming of Martin Luther King or the “tipping point” that will energize the anti war movement and turn it into a raging prairie fire that will sweep evil George and his neocons from office, how come there are less than 100 people camping out at salon de Cindee in Crawford?

For God’s sake, Waco, a city of more than 100,000, is just a hop skip and a jump from Crawford. Are you trying to tell me with a city of that size and that close that you can’t even get the local loonies to come out and show their support for Sheehan?

I hate to bring this up, but Rosa Parks brought the entire city of Montgomery Alabama to its knees. And she did it without PR flaks, the international press, or political advice from Joe Trippi. Good thing Trippi wasn’t there. Otherwise, the sainted Mrs. Parks and her cause would be in the same political graveyard occupied by other losing campaigns Trippi has masterminded. Trippi previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Dick Gephardt - losers all. In fact, looking at that list you realize not one of those worthies even got close enough to smell the oval office.

Hell, even for the daily demonstrations against the war the site doesn’t draw more than a couple of hundred people.

You’d think with all the ink spilled and pixels filled with Cindymania that there would be thousands of lefties down there, screaming their rage and anger at Bush for not doing what they want - which is basically roll over and die.

What’s the matter? Don’t have the courage of your convictions? Don’t want to camp out under the broiling west Texas sun and suffer for the cause? Is the issue of war and peace so unimportant to you that you’re not willing to leave your families, you jobs, all the comforts of home and endure the danger of tripping over a camera cable or getting hit by a speeding satellite truck? Are you afraid you’re going to get poked in the eye by a wayward reporter’s pencil? Does the prospect of being in such close proximity to a bunch of tobacco chewing, bible reading, shotgun toting, red state goobers give you the cold sweats? What’s the matter…

ARE YOU…CHICKENDOVES?

Where’s the spirit that brought us Lenin’s October Revolution? Where’s the courage that gave us Mao’s Long March? Where’s the defiance that fueled the Vietnamese in their quest to defeat the United States - a defiance made easier by your ideological ancestor’s cheering them on while calling for the defeat of the United States armed forces on the field of battle.

Face it. The reason there is no anti-war prairie fire sweeping the country is that you and your lefty friends are a pale imitation of the hard-eyed radicals that manned the battlements in the 1960’s. Those guys wanted a revolution. Your generation complains if there’s no wi-fi access. They wanted to foment mass protest. You people can’t function unless there’s a Starbucks within a couple of blocks. They were readers of Ginsberg, Sartre, and listened to songs by Joan Baez. You guys think addle brained Kurt Cobaine was a poet.

The whole world is watching and you’re sitting in front of your computer writing paeans to a witless, anti-semitic media glutton whose anti-American rants and conspiratorial flights of fancy have driven away all but the most willfully deluded among Democrats.

If you’re so all fired in love with what she’s doing, why aren’t you down there supporting her?

CHICKENDOVE! CHICKENDOVE! CHICKENDOVE!

Abbie Hoffman is turning over in his grave. The Berrigan brothers and other courageous anti-war leftists who were willing to go to jail for their beliefs are weeping in disgust (Note: Philip Berrigan died in 2002). You are shaming the legacy of these people with your cowardice and slavish devotion to comfort and luxury.

And what about your children? What’s the matter, are you afraid to send them to Crawford? Hah! Just as I thought. You’re perfectly willing to send other liberal’s children to stand out in the hot sun, get their mugs on TV day after day, and risk life and limb by taking the chance of having their tin foil hat fall off while mingling with the crush of media folk and other wild eyed leftists. But when it comes to making the ultimate sacrifice and send your kids to man the battlements of the anti-war movement, you balk like the chickendoves you really are.

Get serious, moonbats! Or didn’t you know? There’s a war on!

UPDATE

Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy knows there’s a war on.

With renewed scrutiny of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation due to the Able Danger revelations, several additional questions have been raised about why the Commission failed to include items in their timeline that seem relevant to the investigation as well as additional witnesses whose testimony was, for some reason, not taken.

Ed Morrisey has done a bang up job highlighting the arrest of Iraqi intelligence agents in Germany which occurred at the time that Mohammed Atta and other members of his Hamburg cell were planning the 9/11 attack in Germany. And two seperate memos - one from the State Department and one from the Department of Justice talk about the problems associated with the so-called “wall” set up between the Department of Justice and the FBI, something that many observers believe the Commission should have looked into by calling as a witness one of thier own members, Jamie Gorelick.

Now comes word that the Commission also failed to interview someone who could have told them much about Mohammed Atta. Rudi Dekkers owned the flight school where Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Dekkers also notes another, more peculiar aspect of the Commission’s investigation; he says they got the dates wrong of Atta’s training:

Atta and al-Shehhi first came to Huffman Aviation on July 3, 2000, Dekkers said.

They trained there until Jan. 2, 2001. Each man logged 200 hours of flying time, including lessons in flying commercial airliners.

Dekkers said he is upset that the 9/11 Commission omitted Able Danger’s findings from its report.

Dekkers said he has suspected the 9/11 Commission, appointed by President Bush to investigate the attacks, did not get all the information and that some things reported were wrong.

“The funny thing about it is, if somebody does an investigation like this 9/11 panel, aren’t they supposed to talk to everybody?” Dekkers said. “They never talked to me. Never.”

Dekkers also said that the 9/11 report incorrectly states the dates that Atta spent in Venice.

“If my involvement in the 9/11 report is not accurate, I believe that there is more stuff written that is not accurate,” Dekkers said.

Dekkers has been at the center of conspiracy theorists claims about 9/11 since the first hours following the attacks. In truth, reading about him on the web, he comes off as one of the strangest characters in the 9/11 narrative.

Revelations regarding a loose connection of Huffman Airlines to a CIA proprietary airline (a maintenance company for the CIA asset had a hanger at the same airport and Dekkers had a shadowy relationship with said maintenance company) as well as speculation regarding drug running by clients of Huffman (including an actual bust involving 43 lbs. of heroin found on a Huffman Lear Jet) have set the tin foil hat crowd all atwitter. And as this writer points out, there are several very strange coincidences involving Dekkers that could - maybe - lead one to believe that the CIA in fact was engaged in a covert operation to penetrate al Qaeda by sponsoring flight training for Muslim students. It’s a stretch, but the evidence “fits.” All that means, of course, that if you have a pre-concived idea, you can pick and choose your evidence to prove just about anything.

This brings us back to the 9/11 Commission and why they won’t talk to Dekkers. From reading about this fellow, it becomes apparent that he’s a pretty shady character. He was arrested and charged with fraud in 2003. And there’s been considerable speculation about where Dekkers got the money to buy Huffman in the first place. Rather than sounding like a CIA operative, he appears to be someone who could have been duped (or bribed) into aiding American intelligence.

As John Patten points out in his article, there certainly are some questions that need answering regarding Rudi Dekkers. However, none of those questions relate to any additional role Huffman Airlines played in the 9/11 narrative beyond the two hijackers taking flight training with the company. And this testimony by Dekkers before the House Judiciary Committee pretty much sums up whatever information he could have given to the Commission.

Should the Commission have interviewed Dekkers? If they were trying to do a thorough job the answer would have to be yes. But as we look closer at the Commission’s work in the wake of revelations about Able Danger, it’s becoming more apparent that the Commission in fact did a sloppy and slipshod job in tying up loose ends.

For that reason alone, Senate hearings may be necessary.

NOTE: One other fascinating aspect of Huffman Airlines has to do with the FBI being on their doorstep about 4 hours after the buildings came down on 9/11. I looked for the “FBI Investigative Timeline” mentioned in the 9/11 report to see if that document could have shed light on this rather curious bit of information. However, it was not in the report itself nor could I find an independent rendering of it. Perhaps it’s classified. If not and if you know a link to it, I’d appreciate it if you dropped me a note in the comments or email me.

Someone may want to explain how the FBI was able to trace Atta to the flight school so quickly. What piques my interest is that this would be the kind of information that Able Danger would have had at its fingertips. Did someone slip the FBI Able Danger findings immediately after 9/11?

As I said…curious.

Starting Sunday night at 8:00 PM central time and concluding on Monday evening in the same time period, The National Geographic Channel will air what promises to be an extraordinary fourt part mini-series entitled “Inside 9/11.”

Relying on video clips, audio, documents, and expert commentary, the show promises to be the most in-depth look at the attack to date. From what I’ve seen, the report pulls no punches about culpability. It skewers the FBI, CIA, DoD, FAA, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and makes clear that because very little has changed in the way we go about protecting ourselves, the probability is we’re going to be hit again.

The link above has a preview of the documentary.

They’ve been after George Bush almost since day one. He was “The Accidental President,” “The Smirking Chimp,” “Bushitler,” and worse. They whined like 12 year old girls when Bush used their weak stance on national security against them in the mid term elections of 2002 as a club to beat them soundly. They grumbled like curmudgeons as Bush achieved one legislative success after another on taxes, defense, homeland security, and the budget. They squealed like stuck pigs when the President’s popularity soared after the initial invasion of Iraq. And even now, with the President’s popularity at an all time low, their “issues” are not getting any traction. I’m being sarcastic of course. The only issue the left has had for 5 years had been its unreasoning and unbalanced hatred of George Bush.

Let’s face it; if the left were a baseball team, my Chicago Cubs would have competition for being the worst team in the sport’s history. They can’t play defense. Their pitcher’s lob the ball up to the plate and the Republicans and Bush keep hitting one home run after another. When they get a chance in the field, they end up fumbling the ball, dropping it, and then kicking it for good measure. On offense, they’re pathetic. They just keep swinging and missing. In fact, things are so bad for the left, that lately when they swing they let go of the bat and it sails into the stands, injuring the very people who should be rooting for them.

But, like the swaggering buffoons they are, they talk a good game but never deliver. At least 4 times in the last year they’ve confidently predicted the end of George Bush. And each and every time they’ve predicted it, they haven’t only been wrong, they’ve been comically self deluded.

With a batting average like that, it’s no wonder they’ve never been in the game.

It’s really been a question of wishful thinking. The left thinks that if they can only believe hard enough, their dream of bringing down the President will come true. Sort of like saving Tinkerbell in Peter Pan by averring your belief in her existence but without the magic fairy dust. This has led to some of the most farcical and convoluted campaigns in American political history, each one confidently predicting the end of the Bush Presidency and each one in its turn fizzling out like a wet firecraker on the Fourth of July.

In doing a little research for this post, I googled up “Bush is finished,” Bush will be impeached,” and “Bush will resign.” It didn’t take me long to find a few hilarious examples of why the left is so divorced from reality and why, as D.J. Drummond likes to point out, “Liberalism isn’t an ideology, it’s a mental disorder.”

Did George W. Bush - and/or other top White House officials - have sexual relations with that man, James Guckert?

Lest you think this is an absurd question, I’ll refer you to the widespread rumors that Bush had a long-term sexual relationship with his Ambassador to Poland (”don’t forget Poland!”), former Yale classmate and Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe. As with every other Bush scandal (AWOL, Bulgegate, Harken Energy, etc.), the Victor Ashe scandal has been blacked out by the LRWM. [Lazy Right Wing Media]

Last week, we posted a petition for a Special Prosecutor for “Jeff Gannon.” (So far, we’ve collected nearly 8,000 signatures - please sign it if you haven’t yet.) Reps. Louise Slaughter and John Conyers asked Plame-gate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to expand his investigation to include Guckert/Gannon’s access to secret CIA documents about Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald has subpoena powers, so he’d have no trouble tracking down Guckert/Gannon’s clients from his pager records.

Guckert/Gannon is at the center of what may be the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history.

Watching the left go ballistic over the Gannon/Guckert affair was almost as much fun as watching them throw a tantrum when nobody listened to them. The plaintive wails about their left wing friends in the media not covering “the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history” reminded me of a 5 year old bursting into tears upon discovering there is no Santa Claus.

Their cries about Gannon were nothing compared to the biblical angst displayed following Bush’s victory in November. And this occurred even after Michael (”I don’t care; Supersize me) Moore came out with what they were absolutely sure would ring in the death knell of the Bush Administration; the release of Fahrenheit 911.

They were so sure that this tissue of lies, half truths, out of context quotes, and proven falsehoods would defeat Bush that even mainstream Democrats came to the Washington, D.C. premier to ride that pony to victory. Even after brilliant writers like Christopher Hitchens and John Podheretz had taken the movie apart piece by piece and exposed it for what it was; a film worthy of Hitler’s favorite propagandist Leni Riefenstahl who, by the way, the left found it within themselves to forgive following World War II.

This was typical analysis of the impact the film had on the American public:

Michael Moore’s triumph in “Fahrenheit 911″ is a measure of Jay Rosen’s observation that “the terms of authority are changing in American journalism.” In 1968 after the North Vietnamese Tet offensive, it was the CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite who signaled “enough” to the American TV audience, and to Lyndon Johnson. In 2004, it is the freelance camera dude and eternally unmade bed from Flint, Michigan who has cut through all the embedded blather about G. W. Bush and the so-called war on so-called terrorism. It’s a great country, and a great moment, in which one man can make the networks, the New York Times, the very best of our old institutional media (try the babbling David Brooks this morning) look so foolish, so irrelevant to the truth we really need to know

The swooning by the left following the release of that movie and the certitude with which they believed that Bush was finished as a candidate gave way to gloom and doom after the Republican convention. It was left to Michael Moore to rally the troops and in the process, reveal an inability to face reality:

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street — and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS — YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

And now here, in the dog days of summer, the hopes of the left have been dashed. Not once, but twice. First, the Rove-Wilson-Plame scandal has just never panned out the way they had hoped. Their hero, Joe Wilson, has been so thoroughly discredited that even the media won’t touch him anymore. And as the scandal has turned toward people in the press like Judith Miller who may or may not have had independent knowledge of Plame’s “secret” identity as a CIA agent, it becomes clearer that while acting despicably, Rove probably did nothing illegal. But that didn’t stop months of speculation that finally, once and for all, this would bring the President down

As with most of the dirty doings of the current administration, the Plame Affair has been buried, put through bureaucratic processes to buy time for Bush. But nothing stays buried forever. The blatant criminality of their actions are now bubbling back to the surface, and Bush’s Numero Uno, Karl Rove, affectionately known to George as “Turd Blossom” looks ready to take the fall for the capital offense of treason.

The significance of this latest development will not likely appear in the headlines for a few weeks yet, but it cannot be over-emphasized. Karl Rove (nee Roverer) has been, more than any other individual, the architect of what the world has suffered in these last years of the Bush presidency. These treasonable offenses, revealed thanks to Time Inc. are indefencible. The effects of this will rock the empirical plotting of George W. Bush and his accomplices, if given enough exposure.

Funny how these stories just seem to dissipate like clouds that never quite form, are never quite there. It’s symptomatic of the vacuity of the left’s intellectual engagement that they cannot grasp how truly out of touch with average Americans they really are.

Finally, there’s the Queen of Grief whose one woman vigil at the President’s ranch was supposed to “change the dynamic” of the anti war debate in favor of the those who wish to cut and run in Iraq. They called her “Rosa Parks” and an “icon” of the anti-war movement.

She turned out to be a loon.

Mainstream Democrats have been edging away from Mrs. Sheehan for days, something that the moonbat left hasn’t taken notice of yet. Judging by the number of posts at Huffington, they’re like beheaded chickens running around the barnyard not yet realizing that saner Democrats have abandoned this “icon.”

In fact, she hasn’t changed a thing. For all the millions of words written about Cindy Sheehan, there are still less than 100 people who have joined her little encampment. And while the press pumped up the “nationwide protest” the other night, the facts are a little grimmer for the loony left. Despite massive publicity, there was no massive turnout. Even in Hollywood they could only get about 700 people to stand for a few hours and relive the glories of Viet Nam era protests.

Face it. While many people are unhappy with the war and disapprove of the President’s job in handling Iraq, that simply doesn’t translate into the American people agreeing with the hard left that we should leave now. The war has transcended the President’s popularity. And while they may end up punishing Republicans in 2006 unless there’s some improvement, the left has once again handed the Republicans a gift. They have painted such an awful picture of the situation in Iraq that even modest improvement will seem like victory. They have made it easy for Republicans to claim progress simply by pointing to the left’s rhetoric and saying “See how things have improved?”

Once again, the left has been hoisted on its own petard. Their contempt for the intelligence and good sense of the American people has been on display for all to see. And it will cost them again in 2006.